Saturday, November 29, 2008

Post-Thanksgiving Report

How was your Thanksgiving, vegan America? I hope it was delicious!

Once again this year I made my Mini-Wellington recipe (from Vegan Lunch Box)into one big Wellington for our Thanksgiving centerpiece dish. I decorated the loaf with branches, leaves, and acorns made from extra puff pastry. Isn't it pretty?

I know, I've caught some slack over the years for using puff pastry (yes, Pepperidge Farms frozen puff pastry is indeed vegan, but it's certainly no health food!)

This year the idea of eating transfats with my Thanksgiving feast just didn't sound like any fun, so I tried something new: at the same time I made the puff pastry version for my family, I also took the same loaf mixture (without the peanut butter or sage, plus extra Dijon), wrapped it in cabbage leaves, and baked it with tomato sauce and lemon. Ta da! Vegan Cabbage Rolls, lower in fat, healthier, and absolutely to-die-for. People who tried both even liked the cabbage version better!

We also enjoyed veggies with vegan ranch dip, sushi rolls, fat-free vegan gravy and mashed potatoes, and my sister made a perfect batch of Best Brussels Sprouts. For dessert, my mom made apple pie and huckleberry pie with organic shortening in the crust.

34 comments:

This was my first vegan Thanksgiving. I made a tofu turkey from a recipe I found on line. It was delicious!! My pumpkin pie recipe was also found on line. It was one of Bryanna's recipes. Awesome!! Better than the vegan pumpkin pie I made last year. You're wellington is beautiful! The cabbage rolls sound wonderful. I think that I will be making those soon.

Though we are in Scotland we celebrated Thanksgiving this year to learn all about it! Had the cashew nut roast from our festive page here and sweet potatoes, squash, sage and onion stuffing... was lovely!!

I didn't have a Thanksgiving dinner this year because we were on the way back to Portland from visiting my father in the hospital in Denver. We had a very thankful day that he recovered from a very serious illness and is in a rehab hospital. But our food on the road was tofurky slices on sourdough bread with mustard and a tomato.

Last night I made the Leek Cassoulet from Veganomicon, which was a feast itself. And sometime this week I'll make some more Thanksgiving themed foods. Like this morning, I'll be making cranberry scones.

I also have to thank you and post a link to Depression Cooking with Grandma Clara on my blog. I started cooking my pasta her way - turning off the heat and putting on a lid and it works perfectly! A lot less electricity. And it also occurred to me that I could make my oatmeal and other hot cereals that way and I no longer burn them or boil them over.

I made a warm beet and cranberry tabbouleh adapted from the warm beet tabbouleh recipe in "New Vegetarian Cooking", my mom made a tofurky based from One World Veggie's tofurky, and for dessert we had a delicious 2-layer pumpkin cheesecake pie, a smashing recipe from fatfreeVegan! It was the most delicious pumpkin cheesecake my family and friends ever had! And they wouldn't believe it was made.... with no cheese :)

Thanksgiving this year was awkward as usual. I did bring a vegan sweet potato pie to share, which was actually very good (although the crust was a little salty. Guess there was a typo in the online recipe). It wasn't as bad as last year, though. I caught some asparagus before it got the butter and salt treatment, and it wasn't the nasty canned kind either. Sigh. I just can't wait until things change and maybe I can have everyone over my house for a vegan Thanksgiving...

This year I cooked a wheat, egg, nut and dairy-free Thanksgiving in honor of my daughter's newly-diagnosed allergies. We did have meat, but the potatoes, yams, rice, squash, bread, and baked pears for dessert were completely vegan and also garnered rave reviews from my meat-loving inlaws. Thanks for keeping me inspired with vegan recipes for my daughter.

hi Jennifer-I love your blog and your cookbook1 Your thanksgivving feast seems so family friendly and delicious! I'm curious to see how little shmoo's grown! is he 9 or 10 now? For my thanksgivving and my omni family, I prepared a tofurky, almond greenbeans, mini spelt-corn muffins and a pumkin bundt. They were quite impressed! Next is the lovely holiday season...

I'm a new reader of your blog and exceedingly grateful for the knowledge that the PF puff pastry is vegan. Thanks! My own Thanksgiving feast was some homemade seitan with yuba skin, stuffed acorn squash, sweet potato souffle, green beans, pumpkin cheesecake and pecan pie. It was a good meal, but I'm still trying to find a seitan recipe that I really like - it always seems to either be too tough & dense or too spongy for my taste.

I'd like to point out, since the link to your book is to Amazon, that Amazon.com sells subscriptions to cockfighting magazines. I've stopped shopping at Amazon for this reason, and do my online book shopping at Powell's now, which I notice is also carrying your (awesome) cookbook. While most online booksellers seem to carry nominally historical reference books about this obscene topic, Amazon is the only one who actually sells current periodicals.

I'm not trolling or flaming or trying to start an argument, but just pointing out some info that not everyone may have.

We had Tofurkey at our house and my non-vegan brothers (ages 12 and 13)absolutely loved it! They're pretty picky eaters, but both went back for seconds. My husband's vegan pies were a big hit with them too. I'm slowly converting them :)

We were first timers with a Tofurkey Roast and Dumplings-- the stuffing and dumplings are fantastic and we bought another "giblet gravy" for an extra meal. I am thinking about trying to duplicate the gravy- it was too good for just once or twice a year. Thanks SO much for the Cabbage Roll idea-- we traditionally have Cabbage Rolls on New Year and I was thinking I was just going to have to alter my Stuffed Pepper recipe (a Gimme Lean version). I'll try yours instead. Thanks so much for keeping up the blog now that the cookbook is such a hit. I sure enjoy your posts!

I definitely recommend "Garden Protein's Veggie Turkey Breas with Wild Rice and Cranberry Stuffing"!They are found at Whole Foods in the deli section, but they didn't have it in my city's. Luckily, i'm a mere fifteen minutes from Sebastapol (a town rooted with hippiness), and they in fact did have the special meal. It was voted best "fake meat" online and recommending by PETA. I absolutely loved it alongside the vegan mashed tators I also picked up and a simple baked sweet potato. At the table my plate was juxtaposed with others full of the regular thanks fixings, and no one said a word to me about my "fake dish."

Just wandering if anyone else has to put up with awkward Thanksgiving dinners with carnivorous relatives -or am I the only one? What about you, Jennifer? How do you deal with difficult situations surrounding food during the holidays? People seem to be extra sensitive about holiday food because its so heavily grounded in tradition. I even got dirty looks for bringing a vegan pie to dinner!

We celebrated a few times, but my homemade feast is always preferred by my husband and kids, and the leftover are the best. The new fave this year was a balsamic roasted butternut squash pastina risotto.

I had an awkward Thanksgiving (my first as a vegan) with my sister's friends. My mom (my wonderfully understanding mom) made two versions of the traditional sides and some roasted yams and chickpeas. Only my mom and I touched them.

Amusing story - as we waited for the very slow oven to cook the turkeys, I said "If we were all vegetarians we'd be eating by now." One of my sister's friends said, "If we were all vegetarians I would kill my puppy and eat it." How disturbing! Someone has a little problem...

We had to travel quite a bit over the week and it was so depressing to have to order an odd assortment of ingredients and then hope that it still wouldn't end up as a plate covered in cheese or butter. How do you guys handle it? I pretty much lived on hummus for four days.

I live on the opposite side of the country from my family (and my boyfriend's family) so we just had some friends over for lunch, to watch the parade and whatnot. I DID have tofurkey, but it was in the form of sandwiches: soy cheese and tofurkey, lettuce, tomato, onions, and condiments. We also had a squash casserole, sweet potato fries, autumn couscous and pumpkin-walnut pie!

Jennifer, thanks for the great website and your book. We made a vegan lasagne for Thanksgiving and all the meat-eaters ate it without one complaint about "tofu" what?Do you have any good ideas for a dish that can be transported on a car-ride for a Christmas dinner? Once again, I'll have to make the food for my kiddos and myself as the meat-eaters in the family have no clue as to what to make for someone who doesn't eat eggs, dairy or meat. Thanks...Cheryl P.

sadly, i had to watch my family eat turkey and ham. i tried my best to embrace my love for them and ignore the pain in the world of millions of turkeys slaughtered. i enjoyed the day, but am glad it is over!

As always, we had Harvest Dinner at our house. Which is an open call out to friends and friends of friends to come and bring their favorite vegan dish. This year was a smashing success with 60 people attending(with at least 10 children). I was glad I had bought another large table. The kids did an awesome human pyramid(with all the strength and energy they had from eating all that healthy, yummy food)!Picture url:http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=9441369&albumID=286165&imageID=52445256We had 6 tofurkeys, a vegge ham from Food Fight, a homemade seitan roast, Dragonfly noodles with ginger-baked tofu(mix of pad thai & Red&Black Cafe's Black Dragon noodles), quinoa that was grown in our neighborhood, and many, many other dishes.

I'm 16 years old and i just recently went vegan (on halloween actually). i'd been vegetarian for about 2 years, and i decided to just step it up a little. anyways, my family and i found this little restaurant in durham, nc called Parizade. it's normally just a Mediterranean food place, but for thanksgiving, it turns into a vegan buffet-style eatery. it's fabulous and i highly recommend it for an vegans in the triangle area.